mITc's Hollowstate - Gravediggers - Mix 2

[Mixinthecloud]

When I listened to this early on it seemed like it would be an easy get. WRONG!
Then I listened to Kapu's mix and man did that sound good and I thought this would be way beyond my skills.
And when I got into it and saw the 50+ tracks and the gazillion guitars I thought geez, what have I gotten myself into?
Well, here it is. Let me know what you think. There are a lot of good and creative takes on this and I am curious as to how this stax up against the great mixes here.

Mix 2

Someone gave my first mix a rating of 1! Ouch. That's like getting rocks for Halloween

My second pass at this is still a tough get. My biggest change was in arrangement by automating the drop of all the drums in the choruses except for the synth parts, the overheads, the toms and the samples. I really wanted the synth drums to show up and this was the only way to do it. I have not heard a mix yet which makes use of the synth drums. I did a lot of panning and level changes to the myriad guitar parts looking for tone and figure to keep the ear engaged. The only drums which have added reverb are the toms and just slightly. The rest of the kit has only the room mics for environment. I really liked how those worked. I probably could have done better with my automation, especially the vocals, but it is what it is. I found there was some saturation on the recorded lead vocals so I decided to add more. There is a lot of energy to contend with throughout the song and it was not an easy get.

I did a lot of M/S processing on Mix 2 to try and enhance and separate and added clarity with some top-end EQ.


Thanks for your input and ear time.

mITc

[Roy]

Hey mITc. I give this a quick listen first thing this morning. Overall I feel like it's not quite there yet. It feels too restrained for a song like this. It could be bigger both in width and frequency. It could use some less mids (in like the 500hz) area and make some more highs for excitement. A lot of elements seem to be concentrated in the center and it gets hard to focus on some of the less important parts while parts, like the percussion seem loud in comparison to the rest of the mix especially in relation to the drums and lead guitars. Hope that helps in some way.

[Cudjoe]

Hi MTC i agree with Roys comments i also agree with you its a not a easy one to mix,your low end seems uneven and even though the gtrs tones are good i think it should fill the stereo field a little better with some panning,iam working on this one at the moment and have noticed that to keep things from congesting alot of automation is required,thanks for sharing your mix.

[Mixinthecloud]

Hi MTC i agree with Roys comments i also agree with you its a not a easy one to mix,your low end seems uneven and even though the gtrs tones are good i think it should fill the stereo field a little better with some panning,iam working on this one at the moment and have noticed that to keep things from congesting alot of automation is required,thanks for sharing your mix.

I must admit I get a bit intimidated when I get stereo stems for guitar parts. For me it indicates a decision by the artist (or at least the recording engineer) for the stereo placement of the instrument. I will need to revisit those parts and engineer in better space and possibly some arranement changes.

Thanks for the listen and the notes. All good.

[Mixinthecloud]

Hey mITc. I give this a quick listen first thing this morning. Overall I feel like it's not quite there yet. It feels too restrained for a song like this. It could be bigger both in width and frequency. It could use some less mids (in like the 500hz) area and make some more highs for excitement. A lot of elements seem to be concentrated in the center and it gets hard to focus on some of the less important parts while parts, like the percussion seem loud in comparison to the rest of the mix especially in relation to the drums and lead guitars. Hope that helps in some way.

Please read my response to Cudjoe's notes.

I agree with your assessment. Listening this morning on my phones the low end seemed flappy which is an easy fix. The width is truly an issue (see response to Cudjoe's notes). The only widening I did was MS EQ on the guitar buss but I left every guitar part panned center. I chickened out essentially on panning. I will address this in another mix with a closer look the stereo filed for the guitars and probably some arrangement tweaks too.

Thanks for your ears and comments.

[kapu]

hi! sounds good. the arrangement is just so busy its very hard to make it sound 'complete'. ^_^

[jgrab]

@mixinthecloud,

A tip on stereo tracks: Do you have a quick way of checking the M/S content of stereo files?

You'll notice pretty much all the stereo on the guitars here is just some reverb or delay. Don't be afraid of hard-panning that stuff to make the mix what it wants to be.

Don't read too much into the intent if you think you can make it sound better! It could just as easily have been a plugin default that was panned in the rough mix anyway.

[Mixinthecloud]

A tip on stereo tracks: Do you have a quick way of checking the M/S content of stereo files?
By ear and by metering uncorrelated content.
You'll notice pretty much all the stereo on the guitars here is just some reverb or delay. Don't be afraid of hard-panning that stuff to make the mix what it wants to be.
I disagree with this. Of all the guitar parts (13 of them), only two are mono tracks. No tracks appear to be exclusively guitar effects. And if they were effects, then panning a stereo return to one side would completely change the content of effect, basically losing one dimension of it. That would seem to be against the supposed desires of the artist.
Don't read too much into the intent if you think you can make it sound better!
Agreed
It could just as easily have been a plugin default that was panned in the rough mix anyway.
Not sure about that...

[Mixinthecloud]

hi! sounds good. the arrangement is just so busy its very hard to make it sound 'complete'. ^_^

That's one of the reasons your approach is so valid. Very tough to make all of those guitar parts shine.

[Roy]

I'm starting to mess with this song again. One thing that I've found works on some of the guitar tracks was a compliments a slight pan especially when a track has a complimentary part. Pan both tracks opposite each other, say, 25-50% in either direction and you get some of the benefits of panning wile still retaining a lot of the stereo effect on each track.